Mudras: Information

The Sanskrit word mudrā means a seal: the signet that stamps, and the impression it leaves. Monier-Williams records both senses, and a third: the name of "particular positions or intertwinings of the fingers", practised in worship and "supposed to possess an occult meaning and magical efficacy".

Greek has the exact word. A σφραγίς is a seal, a signet, the mark that makes a thing one's own. Theognis set his σφρηγίς upon his verses; the early Church called its rite of initiation the σφραγίς. A mudra is a seal pressed with the living body: the hand closes a circuit, marks an intention and stamps it on the soul.

ἡ ψυχὴ ὥσπερ ἡ χείρ ἐστιν· καὶ γὰρ ἡ χεὶρ ὄργανόν ἐστιν ὀργάνων.
"The soul is like the hand: for the hand is the instrument of instruments."Aristotle, On the Soul III.8, 432a1

Anaxagoras held that the human being is the wisest of animals because it has hands. Aristotle answered that it has hands because it is the wisest (Parts of Animals IV.10, 687a). Either way the hand stands at the meeting of intellect and matter. That's why every sacred tradition has given it a language.

Zevism holds the chain of all spirituality from its inception to the present. The seal of the hand runs through that whole chain. It appears wherever humans have addressed the Gods.

• Vedic India. Reciters of the Veda mark the pitch accents with movements of the hand. The Pāṇinīya Śikṣā condemns recitation without them, and the living Kerala tradition still raises the hand for the high accent and lowers it for the low.
• The sacred theatre. The Nāṭyaśāstra (chapter 9) codifies 24 single-hand gestures and 13 gestures of the joined hands. In its vocabulary they are hastas, the hands of the actor who embodies the Gods on stage.
• Hatha Yoga. The Haṭhayogapradīpikā (15th century) devotes its third chapter to the mudras, and the Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā lists 25 of them. In these texts the seals are mostly locks of the whole body; the hand seals accompany them.
• Buddhism. The seals of the Buddha took form in the art of Gandhāra. Each of the Five Tathāgatas holds his own: Vairocana the turning of the wheel, Akṣobhya the touching of the Earth, Ratnasambhava the granting of wishes, Amitābha meditation, Amoghasiddhi fearlessness. In Japanese Shingon the seal of the body joins the mantra of speech and the mandala of mind, the "three mysteries" by which Buddhahood is realised in this very body.
• Kuji-in. Ge Hong's Baopuzi (4th century) gives a secret formula of 9 characters for those who enter the mountains: recited in secret, "there is nothing they will not ward off". In Japan the 9 syllables, Rin, Pyō, Tō, Sha, Kai, Jin, Retsu, Zai, Zen, each received its hand seal and passed through Shingon and Shugendō into the protective practice of the mountain ascetics and of the old martial schools.
• Daoism. Daoist priests form jue by pressing points of the hand with the thumb. They use them when reciting scripture and incantations, when pacing the stars of the Dipper and when summoning the divine generals: to invoke spirits, to command ghosts and to spread the vital breath.
• Egypt. The hieroglyph of a man with raised hands (Gardiner A30) writes dwꜣ, to praise and adore. The Souls of Pe make the henu gesture of jubilation, and two upraised arms (D28) write the ka, the life spirit, crowning the Ka statue of King Hor.
• Greece and Rome. Chryses lifts his hands and prays to Apollo (Iliad 1.450). Worshippers raised their palms to the heavenly Gods and turned them down toward the chthonic. Quintilian writes that "the hands may almost be said to speak" (Institutio Oratoria 11.3.85-86) and describes a gesture "placing the middle finger against the thumb and extending the remaining three" (11.3.92). The bronze votive hands of Sabazios raise thumb, index and middle finger; that gesture of the mysteries later became the Christian sign of blessing.
• Judaism. In the Priestly Blessing (Numbers 6:23-27) the priests raise their hands with the fingers parted to form the letter shin, and the people do not look, for the Divine Presence shines through the fingers.
• Christianity and Islam. The Byzantine blessing hand forms the letters IC XC with its fingers. In the Muslim prayer the right index finger is raised during the testimony of the tashahhud (Sahih Muslim 580a).

The roots differ; the act is the same. The hand takes a form, the form holds a power, and the power is directed toward the divine.

Popular culture has kept alive what the modern West forgot. Its most successful works of the occult imagination run on hand seals.

In 2016 researchers at Mie University measured the brain waves of practitioners of the Kōga school as they formed kuji seals under stress and reported a body at rest with a mind holding its focus. The fiction exaggerates. Its source is real practice.

The classical texts of yoga state the power of the mudras without reserve.

In order, therefore, to awaken this goddess, who is sleeping at the entrance of Brahma Dwâra (the great door), mudrâs should be practised well.Haṭhayogapradīpikā 3.5, trans. Pancham Sinh (1914)

These are the ten Mudrâs which annihilate old age and death. They have been explained by Âdi Nâtha (Śiva) and give eight kinds of divine wealth.Haṭhayogapradīpikā 3.7-3.8

There are twenty-five mudrās, the practice of which gives success to the Yogis.Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā 3.1, trans. S. C. Vasu

The traditions explain this power in four ways.

• The hand as microcosm. Indian teaching assigns the five elements to the five fingers: the thumb to fire, the index finger to air, the middle finger to aether, the ring finger to earth and the little finger to water. Joining a finger to the thumb kindles its element; folding it under the thumb restrains it. Kundalini Yoga reads the same fingers through the planets, Jupiter, Saturn, the Sun and Mercury, and Chinese medicine through its five phases.
• The closed circuit. A finger joined to another closes a circle. The life force, prana, which would otherwise disperse through the open hands, is turned back into the body and directed to a centre or an organ.
• Body, speech and mind. In the esoteric schools the seal is never alone: it is joined to the sacred syllable and to the visualised image. The three together form a single act of the whole person.
• Protection and invocation. From the Baopuzi to the Hindu puja, seals ward off what harms and invite what helps. The seals of invocation in this collection are the gestures by which the deity is called, installed and held present.

Zevism reads the seal as the signature of the Logos impressed upon the body. Through it the person, as Plato teaches, becomes like the God as far as is possible: ὁμοίωσις θεῷ κατὰ τὸ δυνατόν (Theaetetus 176b). For that reason the effects of every seal in this collection are set out in five domains.

The physical, emotional and intellectual effects are given as the traditions record them. The domains of Soul and Ascent give their spiritual meaning and the Temple's reading of it.

• Posture. A seal can be held sitting, lying, standing or walking. Where a page gives no placement, the hands rest relaxed on the thighs.
• Pressure. The contact of the fingers is light and fine, and the rest of the hand stays relaxed.
• Hands. Most seals are formed with both hands at once. One hand may begin and the other follow.
• The seal serves the meditation. A seal is an aid, never an end in itself. It is formed when the meditation begins and released when the meditation ends; the meditation, not the seal, sets the practice. Every page gives an example meditation for its seal.
• The seals of Kundalini. The classical seals that awaken Kundalini and expand consciousness are learned with an experienced teacher.